The stuffed bird’s lifeless plastic eyes stare at me, practically glowing in the light. I take a step back, like I think this bird might take flight just like Dr. Hoo did one terrifying night. But the owl stays lifelessly still, and after a few moments I point the flashlight in another direction.
Every detail in this room was attended to: there are soft patches over the furniture’s corners to keep a toddling baby from getting hurt. There are scented sachets in the drawers beneath the changing table to keep the air smelling fresh. There are tiny pink rosebuds on the otherwise white sheets on the crib, as though whoever decorated the room knew the baby was going to be a girl.
Which I was.
The breeze lifts my long hair off my shoulders. I point the light up, looking for the AC vents, for a ceiling fan, for any logical explanation. But there is nothing. No thermostat on the wall, no intricately carved vents by the ceiling. Even the windows aren’t open, and when I try to open them, I discover that vines have pretty much sealed them shut.
This room has a breeze all its own. Like whoever filled it with all of this furniture wanted it to be as comfortable as possible.
I back out of the room. When I turn around, the door slams shut behind me all on its own with a bang so loud that I jump in surprise.
I regain my footing and stand in the hallway, panting as though I’d been running, staring at the door that just slammed shut behind me. I feel the need to put more distance between myself and the nursery.
I drag my bags into the second bedroom, across and down the hall. I manage to open one of the windows just a crack. I lean against the window frame and breathe in the outside air deeply. Not that it offers any respite from the heat. Not like the air in the nursery.
I shake my head. Someone made up that room carefully, attentively, lovingly. Someone—Aidan? his wife? both of them together?—was excited to have me, wanted everything to be absolutely perfect for the little girl about to be born.
How did they go from preparing that perfect room to abandoning me at a Texas hospital?
Aidan must have known I’d see the nursery when he sent me up here. Was he trying to tell me something? Did he want me to know there was a time when he’d had every intention of raising me, caring for me, loving me?
I shake my head and back away from the window. The bedroom I’ve chosen is decorated in bright colors. Instead of a plush carpet at my feet, there is the same blue, yellow, and white tile from the hall, though the colors are faded with age just like they are everywhere else. It’s nothing like my room in Ridgemont, with its thick carpet and floral wallpaper, the pink so bright that it seems like decades wouldn’t be enough to make the color fade.
I grab my phone and dial Nolan’s number, anxious to tell him every last detail of this place. But I freeze before I hit send.
The expression on his face when I told him what I told him before I left Ridgemont blossoms in my mind’s eye. Maybe if I just apologized—No. I bite my lip. Any apology I could offer would be hollow, pointless, empty. I can’t take back what I said. Because it was the truth.
I glance at the phone. Looks like there isn’t any service in here anyhow. I fall back on the bed, grabbing one of the pillows to press into my face, smothering a miserable groan. The pillow’s so covered in dust that it makes me sneeze.
I roll over, and the knife beneath me slides from one side of my pocket to the other, like it wants to remind me that it’s in there. I can’t help but wonder: When will I need it next?
A Dead End?
That woman brought me to a rain-saturated town in the northwestern corner of the United States. She claimed this is where the girl lived. She told me her name: Sunshine Griffith, and I struggled to hide my smile. The girl’s light was so bright that even the human who named her could sense it.
But we were too late. Aidan had already come and gone, taking the girl with him. Of course, I know exactly where he was headed when he left, but I can’t go there. Not anymore. None of my people can get there. When we left, we also gave up the ability to step over its borders, wide as they stretch. Even that woman says she can’t go there now.
Which means I have no more use for her. Although her birthright as a luiseach protected her from being permanently killed at the hands of a demon, she no longer has the power to see spirits and help them move on. Perhaps she’ll try to live out her days as a human, though even she must sense the darkness gathering in the corners of the world. Sometimes I envy humans and their ignorance. They’ll never have to do what I have to.
Even Aidan wasn’t selfless enough to go through with it.
But the woman begs me not to leave her behind. She pleads for a place at my side. I tell her I have no reason to keep her—after all, the only information she offered me was a dead end.
I say perhaps she knew that it would be.
I suggest she may have been working for Aidan all along.
I’ll make my way south and wait as close to the campus as possible. They can’t stay hidden inside forever.